The First Ship (oneshot)
by Touhoufanatic
Summary: The deeps sea fleet has come, and wreaks havoc upon the Japanese lands. hundred die to protect its people as researchers work to find a way to combat them. but just how far will they go, and to what lengths will they ignore their own morals, to create the first ship.


**Authors forward: this is an idea that just popped into my head, a idea that, what if the ship girls were more human than we thought, or had been. It's just one of many ideas and I'm sure many people have similar on how the ship girls came to be. Either way I hope you all enjoy this little one shot idea. The first ship!**

Sakamoto looked at his work desk and swept his arm across it in anger, sending dozens of small beakers and test tubes to the ground with a loud crash. Nothing was working! Every test, every study, every challenge that presented itself to him over this damn problem just didn't work! It was the most frustrating moment of his entire career thus far.

Shaking his head, he stormed out of his laboratory and a few minutes later broke out of the building to stand on the edge of the dock, looking out at the sea beyond. His laboratory was well protected, situated in a small and unassuming island with a primary naval base nearby. As a Naval R&amp;D scientist, it should be the perfect place to be, close to the navy and the ocean, yet far from peering eyes. It wasn't, at least not anymore.

The abyssal fleet, an unknown organization of, not quite ships, but not quite humans had appeared three weeks prior. Shaped vaguely like human woman, but completely unlike them beyond that, these "ships" tore into the Japanese navy like a storm of arrows across an ancient battlefield. In the first week alone, they lost three cruisers and a battleship. Eleven destroyers, nine cruisers and three battleships in the second week, and those numbers were only increasing now at the end of the third.

After the first week of losses he had thrown himself into his research like a man possessed, intent on creating something, anything to at least try to level the playing field. Nothing had worked thus far. The abyssal were human in shape, form and size for the most part, but moved in mechanical ways and carried almost alien guns that did devastating amounts of damage to their ships. They were small, fast, and extremely powerful, the worst opponents for even their largest battleship. Large caliber cannon rounds missed them, as did torpedoes. Machine guns could track them, but did nothing against their inhuman armour. Fighters were the only thing that came close to keeping them at bay, their large caliber machine guns, and high accuracy dive bombs being the only things that had been able to hit, and damage the abyssal thus far. It was not a good situation.

The sudden sound of explosions in the distance, and the lights that accompanied them were the only sounds across the ocean today. Even the nearby naval base was out in force, trying to stem the tide of destruction that the Abyssal were bringing. But it was hopeless. That was what Sakamoto knew deep down in his heart. The Abyssal wielded technology that was beyond them. And even with the fresh bodies of the few Abyssal that the navy had killed, he hadn't been able to discern anything from them beyond that they were not human.

Sakamoto shook his head and headed back inside to his laboratory, walking briskly through the halls. No, they had to have a weakness. Thousands of men and women were sacrificing their lives to protect the people of Japan, and it was his job to make those losses mean something, to make them not have been in vein.

Stepping into his bio lab Sakamoto put on a work smock and looked at the body on the slab in the center of the room. The latest Abyssal ship to have been killed and have its body captured, this one, like all of the Abyssal thus far, had been classes using the Iroha, and was called a Ri-class, and was figured to hold a similar position in its forces to a heavy cruiser.

Unlike previous bodies that were sent to him that had missing limbs or entire chunks of their bodies this one was in one piece, apparently killed from the concussive wave of a depth charge. Pulling out his scalpel and other instruments, he stepped up beside it and got to work.

Hours later Sakamoto sighed. The autopsy had been successful and he had gotten many valuable bits, tissues samples and the like, and had discerned much information from it, but it was all the same as what he already had discerned from previous cadavers. The Abyssal physiology was extremely close to a human females. The bones were shaped and formed the same, the flesh was the same and even the reproductive organs were the same, though they seemed to be devoid of the actual capability unless certain chemicals went through their systems. They had a bloodstream, but their blood was chemically like a cross between blood and oil. The only true difference he could see biologically was the presence of an unknown chemical, and the complete lack of many minor organs such as the gallbladder. And it only had one kidney. Its adrenal glands, heart, lung and stomach were larger as well, possibly attributing to the Abyssal's high speed and constitution. It was all the same as he had found before. Nothing was different between this specimen and any other beyond their basic bodily shape, and even that was within human parameters.

The Abyssal weapons were the same, taking them apart discerned nothing that he didn't already know, didn't give him any new insight or direction to follow. They were made of naval grade steel composites, the same as any ship would be though they were far lighter, and had an ammo storage area in them only big enough for two, maybe three rounds depending on the size. In battle though, it was reported that a single Abyssal could fire hundreds of rounds, far more than their ammo capacity. Their circuitry was advanced, but not impossible to discern, and there was no signs of ammo feeds or manufacturing capability inside their weapons. They also seemed to be handheld, like a handgun that wrapped around a person's entire arm. The same information. Nothing new to discover, nothing to help him find a way to break the stalemate, nothing to help him avenge the thousands of dead, nothing to avenge his brothers losses, or his fathers.

Naval families always had the worry of losing those who served their country, just like Air force and Army families. Sakamoto knew this as well as anyone else who came from a naval family, but having both his brothers and his father die within a week of each other, and his mother fall into a coma from the shock . . . . . he had to find something, something to use against the Abyssal! He hadn't joined the navy but gone to university. He became one of Japan's premier research and development scientists so he could help save lives from the sidelines! He had to find a way!

EEEEEE. EEEEEEE. EEEEEEEEE.

Sakamoto looked up at the small light above the door, flashing green in time with the horrible buzzer that was his door alarm. As long as it didn't flash red, he was safe, but that didn't make things any easier. His visitor was likely a lieutenant or admiral from the navy, come to check up on his progress, only there wasn't any. There was no progress, everything he was finding was the exact same as everything else he had found before!

Sakamoto shook his head to calm himself down as he left the room and took off down the halls. A minute later he was before the exterior door to his lab, and braced himself as he opened it. Instead of an admiral, an officer stood before him holding a large, heavy metal box with numerous locks on its outside and metal braces welded to its corners.

Sakamoto cleared his throat and fully opened the door. "Yes, what is it?" he asked doing his best to be calm, despite his current mindset.

"Um, yes sir, I- . . . I, " the officer began as he nervously looked around and shook the box in his hands, causing its contents to rattle like bits of metal, " I'm sorry sir. I should salute but I um, this box is so heavy that-."

"Never mind that, what are you here for?" Sakamoto asked, now no longer nervous, and just annoyed by this obviously young officer's presence.

The officer nearly cringed like a kicked puppy as he spoke. "I- I'm sorry, sir. I was sent to deliver the contents of this box to you. They were found, impossibly, floating on the surface of the water over the area where a battle was fought last week."

Sakamoto raised an eyebrow to the officer, this was something unheard of. "Alright, put the box down. You have the keys for those padlocks, yes?"

"Yes, I'll just, uh, ugh-." The officer started and then groaned in horror as he placed the box down, then noticed Sakamoto's smock, covered in black and red liquid.

"What is wro- ? Ah, you don't need to worry. It's the blood of those Abyssals. I was just finishing up an autopsy, or perhaps dissection would be a better word." Sakamoto explained as he took the ring of keys from the young officer and knelt down to pick up the box. "Is there anything else?"

"Er, well not really." The officer said nervously as he took a step back from Sakamoto, fear seeping into his mind from both Sakamoto's large build, and the blood covering his smock.

"Then you may leave. I have experiments to run." Sakamoto stated as he stood up, the box in hand resting against the still almost liquid blood on his smock.

The officer saluted and ran off with impressive speed, not saying a word as he did. Sakamoto couldn't care less, he just wanted to see what was inside of the box, and he wanted to see if it could turn the tides. Bringing the box to his primary laboratory, after dropping his smock off at the bio lab, he placed it on the table beside his computer and quickly lodged all fifteen keys in to the fifteen padlocks that were embedded in the boxes lid. The sheer number of locks seemed extreme, as did the fact that none of the keys said which lock they were supposed to go into, Causing it to take almost an hour of changing out keys for Sakamoto to get the right keys in the right locks, but when he did, he was met with more questions.

Taking the lid off and setting it heavily on the desk Sakamoto peered inside the box and pulled out its contents. Burnt orange rocks that looked like chunks of raw copper, small little bricks of pure steel, small bullets with no caliber ratings on them or markings of any kinds, and small cans of liquid shaped like fuel barrels. The contents were very confusing to him, but on the bottom of the box were two pieces of paper, a note folded and stamped with the wax seal of the admiralty, and a piece of paper with a strange symbol upon it. Opened the letter, and not caring about its seal in the least, Sakamoto looked over the letter.

To R&amp;D Researcher Io Sakamoto, From the Admiralty board.

The contents of this box before you were picked up floating on the surface of the water where we lost the Fourth Fleet last week. Some initial analysis has been done of them but we'd like you to continue what our less than speedy research staff has done. What we have discovered about them is that they appear to be small, almost ration like amounts of bauxite ore, composite steel, an unknown ammunition type, and naval grade fuel. We do not know how they were floating on the water's surface, but we are sure you will be able to find out more than our other staff has.

We thank you for your continued work and hope to hear pleasant news soon.

The Admiralty Board

Sakamoto dropped the letter by his computer, letting it fall onto the CPU, and picked up a silver block that was supposedly composite steel. Its color, sheen and texture were right, but its weight was all wrong, a steel block of this size should've been much heavier, yet it was only the weight of a small rubber ball.

Stepping across the room Sakamoto placed the steel under his largest and most precise microscope and sat down, tuning the dials to get an image of the metal's structure, to see if it was really steel. Sakamoto looked through the microscope for a moment before leaning away from it and blinking before looking back again. The metal was indeed composite steel, but it wasn't just steel, it was extremely dense, as if a thousand blocks of that size had been compressed into just the one.

Sakamoto pushed his chair away from the microscope and leaned back, looking over to the desk where the box's contents were piled, including a pile of twenty such little steel blocks. The weight difference itself was absurd but if that one block was so dense, and he had twenty more . . . . . Sakamoto's eyes slowly widened and he did the math in his head. With just the amount of condensed metal he had on his desk a small frigate could made if the metal was uncondensed, and if that much could make a small frigate, was this the way they had been doing it? Was this the reason the Abyssal armour was so tough?!

Sakamoto rushed over to the desk with the box and picked up a handful of the small unknown ammunition rounds and looked them over. They had no markings, but were vaguely shaped like naval cannon rounds. What if-?

Sakamoto didn't even finish the thought as he ran out of his main laboratory and into the bio lab. Stepping past the autopsied body of the RI-class, Sakamoto picked up one of the weapons he had placed on the counter and forced open its ammunition compartment, knowing how to after having cut the other weapon clean in half to discern its design. Throwing all of the small ammunition pieces into its compartment as he walked, Sakamoto stepped outside of the building and put his arm into the weapon's handhold. Just placing his hand inside made him feel nauseous, and touching the trigger made his finger sting like it was being mauled by a kitten, not wholly painful, but far from comfortable. Pulling the trigger, the weapon's jaw-like front opened up, and its three hidden cannon barrels roared to life, each firing almost five times, their shells flying out into the distance and creating massive blasts in the water near the horizon.

Sakamoto let the weapon fall off his arm and then looked his arm over, cringing at the pain. The blood veins on his arm were enlarged, looking as if they could rip from his skin, and massive bruises were all across it. His finger was the worst, and his knuckles not far behind, nearly black from the bruises and welts across them, it was painful to even move his fingers; it was painful to even look at.

Dropping to his knees and using his other hand, Sakamoto tore open the weapons ammo compartment, and pulled out all three of the bullets, one of them, the barest bit smaller than the other two. The simple meaning of this was staggering. Their weapons used micro amounts of the ammunition, meaning three single small rounds, could easily last an entire battle.

Forcing himself to his feet and grabbing the weapon Sakamoto hurried back into his laboratory. He may have just discovered the singular reason why the Abyssal had such an advantage over them. But he had to discover how they had this advantage. In his mind, he had already ruled out the concept of nanotechnology. The Abyssal technology was advanced, but not that advanced. He had also ruled out the idea of condensed matter physics. None of their items had the right make up, they were heavily condensed, but they were condensed as small versions of themselves, and it wasn't the matter itself that was condensed on its own.

Sitting down at his computer he began typing fanatically, hoping he might find something in his databanks that he missed. After an hour, he sighed and slammed his good fist onto the desk, causing a piece of paper that sat on the boxes edge to fall off and drift onto his keyboard. It was the second piece of paper that had been inside of the box, the piece he had yet to look at. Picking it up, he looked over the image, suddenly very intrigued by it. The image looked like a symbolic drawing of a dragon, or possibly a phoenix, it was hard to tell, and had waves drawn around it like a circle. It looked like an ancient families crest or even a. . . . . magic circle.

Sakamoto turned his head to the side as he contemplated that single stray thought. He, like the vast majority of the world, did not believe in the idea of magic. Science and logic was his domain, a domain that was currently only helping him to find more questions, and no answers. Japan was the most spiritual of places though and while he didn't believe in magic itself, the Gods were a different story that were argued at many times by many people.

With a sudden and seemingly stupid idea Sakamoto placed the paper symbol on the table and carefully placed a piece of steel on top of it. Nothing happened for a minute so he reached forward to grab it, but as he touched it a jolt of static arced from his finger to the steel, and it began glowing faintly blue.

The reaction was unprecedented and unnatural, he hadn't expected anything like it, but it piqued his interest even further. Picking up the piece of steel and the paper he put both in a nearby radiology chamber and flicked it on, gathering any data he could about the energy he could.

When the machine pinged signaling its completion, Sakamoto pulled the analysis out of the printer, looking over the data and scanning for anything that caught his eye. Walking over to his computer with the paper he pulled up a previous radiology scan he had done on an Abyssal tissue sample. They were almost the exact same. The Abyssal tissue sample was slightly different, but the two radiology scans were almost identical, that strange symbol had somehow imbued the piece of steel with the same wavelength that was always present on the Abyssals.

Sakamoto leaned against the island in his laboratory in disbelief. A symbol had imbued a piece of metal with an unknown waveform. The possible application of such a thing could be staggering, but he still had no idea how it happened, or how it could be used. Did it mean that the steel could turn into an Abyssal or something? The possibilities were too far reaching to come to an easy conclusion.

Grabbing the piece of paper and the chunk of steel from the radiology machine he placed them both on the table beside the bisected abyssal weapon he had put there days before. He needed to find out what this wavelength was he needed to-

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

The sound of steam, like cold water being poured onto molten rock suddenly filled his lab. Looking for its source, his eyes widened. The piece of steel had landed right near the two halves of the abyssal weapon, and right before his eyes, the steel looked like it was melting between the two pieces as they moved together, sandwiching the steel between them, a second later, accompanied by a small flash of light, the abyssal weapon was whole again, as if he had never cut it in half. Stepping over to it and carefully looking it over Sakamoto could not believe it. The weapon was like it was new, with no markings, nicks or even grease anywhere on it. It was if the steel had flawlessly repaired it.

Sakamoto stood there for many minutes pondering everything that had happened thus far in the day. The autopsies on the Ri-class had yielded no results, yet a box of items gathered from the oceans had provided him with more data than he had gotten in weeks. Sakamoto let out a sigh of relief, he was finally getting somewhere, but now he had to figure out in which direction he would head.

The answer was obvious. Taking another piece of steel from the pile he placed it on the piece of paper and waited. This time it took a few minutes, but the steel did begin to glow on its own, meaning the static shock from his finger wasn't the catalyst, it had just sped up the effect. Taking the newly imbued piece of steel in his bruised hand he moved it to the far side of the computer and imbued another piece, using his good hand to stop the piece of paper from moving or being damaged. But instead of the piece of steel dropping to his desk when he released his hand, it stuck to his hand. A second later the steel seemed to turn into a liquid state and flowed up his arm, coating it entirely before it just disappeared, leaving his arm as it had been the day before, unbruised, un-battered, and not in pain.

Sakamoto looked over his arm and clenched his fist, it feeling just as strong, if not stronger than before. How did it happen? Why did the steel do that? How did it do that? Questions orbited Sakamoto's mind like the moons of Jupiter, and he had no ready answers. He needed answers, but more than that, he needed a place to get them. And while it was horribly inhumane, he knew where he could get the answers he wanted.

Imbuing all of the steel and fuel he carried it to the bio lab, and using heavy metal and leather straps to tie down the dissected Ri-class, placed all of the imbued materials upon it's chest and around its torso. Sakamoto watched and waited for almost an hour and nothing happened. The materials did not shift, change or do anything, and nothing happened at all to the Ri-class's body. Sakamoto had hoped he could possibly do the unthinkable and revive and interrogate a live Abyssal, but it seemed that it would not be.

Sighing heavily to himself Sakamoto began taking the materials off of the Ri-class's cadaver, knocking one of them off of her and into a nearby bucket of water as he did. Walking around to fish the steel out of the bucket he saw the steel disintegrating, and the water turning a pleasant pale green in color.

Picking up the bucket Sakamoto looked it over. There was no sign of metal having ever been in the water, but it was now green, as if rusted copper had gotten into it. With a sigh of regret over the loss of that material he looked to the body of the Ri-class, knowing that it would need to be washed off before he could dispose of the body safely. Splashing the buckets contents over the Ri-class's body Sakamoto walked to the bio lab's heavy iron door, punching in the key code to leave and return to his main laboratory.

Chink, clink, clang.

Sakamoto's blood turned cold as he heard the sound of metal striking metal and quickly turned around. The Ri-class that moments before had been dissected and splayed open, now had its entire torso closed and whole, and was moving, raging against the straps and bindings holding it down to the dissection slab.

A sick twisted happiness spread through Sakamoto as he canceled the key code and walked over to the table.

Seeing him the Ri-class bared her teeth at him and hissed like an animal, raging against her restraints.

"Can you understand me?"

The Ri-class continued to pull against straps.

"If you cannot understand my words, then I shall attempt to see what you can understand. Let's go with something simple, nerve endings." Sakamoto said as he took his hand and place it on the Ri-class's uncovered and well-toned stomach.

The Ri-class continued to rage, seeming to not notice Sakamoto's touch.

"Hmm, how about this then." Sakamoto muttered to himself as he moved his hand up and place it on one of the Ri-classes breasts, pressing slightly.

The Ri-class continued to thrash around, though it's cheeks flushes slightly, the red readily noticeable compared to the rest of its nearly white skin.

"So, you do have feeling across your body, but seem unable to fully comprehend it and speak. I suggest if you can speak to do so. I will get answers out of you one way or another!" Sakamoto yelled in sudden anger.

The Ri-class continued to thrash around.

Sakamoto sighed as he took a needle from a nearby table and used it to forcibly draw some blood, much to the Ri-class's noticeable disgust and regret. It was thrashing so much the needle almost broke.

"It looks like you and I will have a lot to discuss in the next few days. " Sakamoto said to himself as he placed the now filled vial of fresh blood on a rack and pulled a phone from his pocket, dialing a number on it quickly. "Until I get more of those material to test with, we shall have so much fun!"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Almost a week later Sakamoto walked into the bio lab, his smock as clean as his freshly shaven face, and a smile covering it. In the previous few days the Ri-class had calmed down and thrashed less and less till it's current state of barely making any moves, merely turning its head to look at Sakamoto as he entered the room.

Stepping up beside the slab and the Ri class Sakamoto held up the paper with the symbol upon it, and the Ri class seemed to try to move its head away, though it could not.

"So, this symbol means something to you, huh?" I hadn't thought about it till now as I got a large amount of that material in, but this has something to do with your origins, doesn't it!"

The Ri-class looked at Sakamoto, blinking every few seconds.

Sakamoto glared at the Ri-class before turning slowly, circling the slab as he spoke. "In the past week I've discovered a lot, you know. But some things are still eluding me. You abyssal have the forms of human females and even have the reproductive organs, but seem unable to reproduce naturally. Those weapons of yours are so powerful they could easily break a weak humans arms, yet you wield them without worry. You are made of flesh, but can take machine gun and canon rounds like a steel wall, merely shrugging them off without a worry. And then there's the strange energy that surrounds you, I could care less about everything else honestly, because that energy that surrounds you is, to me, the most interesting. I think it's why you can wield your weapons and take on ours. I think it's what makes you so powerful!"

The Ri-class didn't react in any way and just looked at Sakamoto.

"This symbol seems to imbue materials, and depending on who's doing seems to imbue it differently, so I've drawn that symbol on a room in my lab. I've tried imbuing many materials at once, but nothing happened. So I had a thought, what if a person was imbued, would they become powerful enough to take you on?!"

The Ri-class still said noting, but her eyes filled with dread and worry.

Sakamoto smiled. "Interesting. Does that make you afraid, afraid that you'll have to fight us on even terms? Afraid that your kind will fall once we gain a step up on you!" Sakamoto yelled before walking to the entrance to the bio lab and looking back at the Ri-class, "I'll come back for you in a bit when I can show you the fruits of my labor. When I can take your life personally, like you've taken so many other peoples!"

Sakamoto stepped into the room he had prepared over the past week. Everything was ready, and so was he. He had all the resources he needed, he had all of his data on a heavy duty external hard drive in case something went awry, and he was mentally prepared for anything. Stepping into the massive symbol now etched onto the floor he pressed a single button, dropping all of the imbued material onto the circle with him. Within seconds the materials, and the circle even, began to glow vibrantly, and Sakamoto could feel the energy rising around him. As the metal and fuel began to melt and slide up his legs though, something else happened, bones began to crack, flesh began to tear, and every inch of Sakamoto's body suddenly was filled with horrid pain, dropping him to his hands and knees.

"Ah, what is, this isn't part of the- what's happening, it feels like-, like my body is being crushed!" Sakamoto groaned as the metal, fuel and ammo began moving around him, covering his body. Then the bauxite began to change, and vaporize. "What, this is, no this gas is-!" Sakamoto began as the gas, the material, the entire base, and his body exploded in a cacophonous blast that was heard a hundred leagues away, leveling the entire island and leaving barely any trace.

A few days later after rescue teams had been dispatched, the naval officers brought a young brown haired girl to the admiralty board. The girl introduced herself as a ship girl named Inazuma and gave them an external hard drive that carried all of the late Sakamoto's research on it. They discovered that he had basically lost his mind and had dabbled in technologies unknown and unethical. But following his research, other scientists found ways to copy his actions safely. Using wounded, broken and weak human volunteers as a base, they transformed them into beings similar to the Abyssals, and with even more work, they found that if a person of admiral rank did the construction, the chance of success was even greater.

Inazuma claimed to have no knowledge of what happened to the base or Sakamoto, claiming to have gained consciousness after the explosion. No remains of Sakamoto or the captured and tortured Ri-class were ever found, but Japan had gained the edge it needed. It gained the ship girls, and in less than a year had the technology perfected and moving forward. They could combat the Abyssal ships.


End file.
